Samir Geagea

Samir Geagea (25 October 1952-) was the Executive Chairman of Lebanese Forces (LF) from 15 January 1986, succeeding Elie Hobeika.

Biography
Samir Geagea was born on 25 October 1952 in the Ain el-Rummaneh suburb of Beirut, Lebanon to a family of Catholic Maronites. He was an American University of Beirut student until the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, and he rose through the ranks of the Phalange and Lebanese Forces militias. In 1978 he was responsible for the Ehden massacre, which resulted in the death of Tony Frangieh, a rival Maronite warlord. He led 1,500 battle-hardened soldiers in northern Lebanon, fighting the Progressive Socialist Party of Walid Jumblatt, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and Syria in the Chouf Mountains in the center of the country. He once occupied the presidential palace, but on 13 October the Syrian Arab Army ousted him from the Baabda palace. In 1992 Kataeb Party leader Georges Saadeh expelled Geagea from his party after Geagea ran for president for the Kataeb party in opposition to Saadeh, and he was later charged with several war crimes, including the assassination of Prime Minister Rashid Karami in 1987, Dany Chamoun and his family, and a church bombing. In 2005 he was released from prison, and in 2012 he survived an assassination attempt by Hezbollah.